


The Orphan's Song

by LucyLovecraft



Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: (I mean actual lice), Adoption, Baby Orphan Bohun, Backstory, Bittersweet, Childhood, Folk Music, Gen, Orphans, Pre-Canon, Sad and Happy, canon typical lousiness, everyone adopts baby Bohun in my fics have you noticed this, he's too dumb to be left unattended, his survival makes no sense otherwise, this fic got me feeling things, this poor unwashed child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:34:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: For the Yuletide Trylogia prompt asking "Where did Bohun's torban come from? When and where did he learn to play it?"Eager, now, the little hand strummed clumsily at the strings as the kobzar set up each chord. Yet he did not claw back and forth, as some children did, for the sake of the noise itself. This boy knew he was to play thesong, note by note. Standing this close, the kobzar could tell the child was holding its breath: breathless, reverent.“Hey, that’s pretty good,” the kobzar said truthfully. “And do you remember the words I sang before?”He needn’t have asked.“Rose the moon in windless silence,”the boy sang, voice rising sweet and true in a fearless treble.“The Cossack lay beneath the tree,His blood flowed down to the river,The river flowed to the sea.”
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	The Orphan's Song

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism welcome! I know I was playing fast and loose with kobzar traditions. And as for my fake Ukrainian folk song crimes... I have all my confessions in the end notes.

The old kobzar let the ending verse of his song fade like the breath of the dying hero. The last notes of his torban fell like droplets into a still pool of perfect silence, as though every man, woman, and child gathered near held reverence for the poor young Cossack’s final words. The kobzar bowed his head—not just like a man mourning for one brave son of the Steppe, but like one bent by the loss of every mother’s son who had marched off to war and glory and never marched home again. 

As one body, his audience released its collected breath with a sigh. Yet each member had a voice: the creaking wheeze of a man older than the kobzar himself; the musical sigh of a young girl, heart brimming with tender sorrow; the over-loud exhalation of a man who wanted his fellows to know it had been _just_ like that when he was a warrior. And there was a sniffle—so close by the kobzar’s knee that the old man nearly twitched, thinking a dog that had come too close. 

But no, what sat at his feet sniffled again, and that tremulous sound could only come from a child’s small chest. 

The kobzar shifted uneasily in his seat. But his satchel was still under his foot, its drawstring looped tight around his calf. Good. And all the while, he never missed a beat of his performance patter. Reassured, he raised his eyes to the crowd, surveying one and all with a gaze as blind as justice. 

“Remember the brave Cossack, good Christian people. And spare, if you can, a coin or morsel for another Christian soul: a fellow traveller who reminds you of our heroes.”

He lifted his foot, undid the drawstring of his pack, and proffered it to the crowd with dignity. These were poor people: he did not expect much. Maybe one or two coins now, and a bit of bread later in the evening. But almost at once, a rustle of skirts alerted him to someone drawing near. 

“Here, old father,” said a sweet young voice. The girl who had sighed so prettily as she thought of that lonesome, dying hero? She pressed a loaf into his hand. A full loaf, crust crackling and yielding under his fingers.

“God bless you, daughter,” he said. “May the world be as generous to you as you are to me.”

She must be quite young, the dear thing. She stammered and must have been staring at her feet, judging by the angle by which her confused words came to his ears. But he patted the small, smooth hand that had given him such a princely meal and blessed her again. He cherished these moments: to let people know their charity was seen in God’s eyes, no matter how small the gift. The kobzar allowed that, from a practical perspective, he was more grateful sometimes when larger gifts came his way. But he was not a beggar—he sang broad horizons, and love, and glory into people’s lives. He gave of the spiritual, and sometimes that was all he got in return. That was all right, as long as he didn’t have to live on spirit alone too much. 

But he had not lived this long by being a holy ascetic, much less a fool.

As the crowd dispersed, he was keenly aware that the small presence by his knee had not been called away by a loving mother, or father, or sibling. It sat there, even after others moved away. 

The longer it sat by him, the more the kobzar was certain he could _smell_ it. A very unwashed kind of smell. 

He scratched himself, reflexively, imagining what unseen pests might be leaping from his silent companion’s body to his own to suck his frail old blood. 

“Wipe your nose, son,” he admonished, but gently. 

The little breaths became less wet sounding. 

“Now, where’s your mama?”

Silence. 

“Where’s your papa?” he tried again. 

The kobzar _knew_ silence. Every silence had its own quality: a musician knew the weight and tone of each. This one made his heart sink. 

He kept a slightly tighter hold on torban and pack. 

The town they were in was truly more a crossroads than a town: a good crossroads, not so big that it was too costly, nor so small that he couldn’t get his daily bread. But there would always be those who weren’t above robbing a blind old man for a crust, let alone a loaf. A starveling boy might survive in such a place, just barely, by snatching at all he could.

The kobzar had just about made up his mind to call out to the people to draw attention to the urchin at his knee—to call on them to feed the child, or to see if they would drive it away if it were known to be thievish—when a soft little voice spoke. 

“The hero,” the voice said, “the one who—who died. In your song. He wasn’t like—like some of those others.”

“Not like the other Cossack heroes, my lad? Now what makes you say that?” the kobzar asked, stalling for time somewhat as he tried to guess what his little companion meant. 

“He didn’t have—wasn’t like those other songs. Didn’t have all those people.”

“‘Those people’?” He could guess, though. God save him, but he already knew what a boy like this must have found to cling to in that song. 

“Wasn’t like those others,” the boy explained. “The ones with girls, and… all them other people. The heroes are always talking about them. Always sending bay horses and crows back to tell, um, stuff.”

“Just because the hero in this song didn’t know _who_ they were doesn’t mean there weren’t those people, once. Maybe he didn’t know their names. It’s a hard life, being a hero. Maybe he didn’t remember. But that wasn’t the hero’s fault, was it?”

Such a ringing silence followed that pronouncement that he feared he’d done more harm than good. The kobzar knew he was a tender-hearted old fool, a romantic. No one his age had any right to believe his own songs. But a child should not be so silent. It was a hard world, already; the kobzar had no business making it feel harder.

“Here,” the kobzar said, shifting his instrument in his lap. “Have you ever tried one of these? It’s a torban. And it’s a rare thing for a kobzar like me to have such a fine and lovely friend to sing with as this here is.”

That was a different silence. It did not pierce his heart like the first, thanks be to God. 

“Did you nod, son? I can’t see, you know.” 

“Oh! No, I… never,” the boy whispered.

“Well, maybe you _should_ try. Here, wipe your hand on the hem of my robe”—he needed no eyes to know those fingers must be filthy—“and give me your thumb.”

A shuffling at his feet, a shift of fabric, and a child’s hand pressed against his own. It was so very small. The bones were bird-like under his fingers. 

He held that little thumb above the strings, arranged his own fingers for the first chord to the song, and helped the boy manage his first, fumbling strum.

The boy gasped as though mud had turned to gold under his hands. Breaking free of the kobzar’s grasp, he strummed the strings again, then a third time, as though if he did the thing fast enough he might _see_ the music leave the strings, like a bird rising to the air. 

“Easy, easy,” the kobzar said, a little flattered by the aura of his own magic. “Here, you remember how the song went? There was a note that came after, wasn’t there?”

He had spoken as one often spoke to children, leading them by the hand. But this little boy hummed the first note, then the next, then the full bar. Any bold child might have done so, of course. Not all might have done so with such trembling conviction. 

Eager, now, the little hand strummed clumsily at the strings as the kobzar set up each subsequent chord. Yet the child didn’t claw back and forth as some children would, for the sake of the noise itself. This boy knew he was to play the _song_ , note by note. Standing this close, the kobzar could tell the child was holding its breath, reverent.

“Hey, that’s pretty good,” the kobzar said truthfully. “And do you remember the words I sang before?”

He needn’t have asked.

 _“Rose the moon in windless silence,”_ the boy sang, voice rising sweet and true in a fearless treble.  
_“The Cossack lay beneath the tree,  
__His blood flowed down to the river,  
__The river flowed to the sea._

 _“Brave river, my blood flows slowly;  
_ _Sleepless, your water roars and raves.  
_ _When my body can fight no longer,  
_ _Bear my soul upon your waves.”_

The boy sang on, with more feeling than any child should, when singing of death. The words meant something to this boy—though they might well mean much to many children, times being what they were, times being what they’d always been. And yet… and yet the kobzar knew few children could sing like this.

When they reached the end of the song and saw the dying Cossack down once more into the embrace of dark earth, the kobzar let out a sigh of pure satisfaction. Of course the strummed chords had been inept, but the song had _lived_ in this boy. And, from the faint tremor in the strings, he knew the boy’s hand still pressed to them, trembling, unwilling to part with the touch of the instrument that had sung with him.

A seed of intuition sprouted in the kobzar’s mind, quickly putting down roots.

“Hey, hey my lad,” he said, gently, patting the small hand. “You’ve sung so well you deserve a bite of my bread, don’t you?”

When the torban was laid safely aside, they both ate with the avid focus of those who knew what it was to go without food. The kobzar ate slowly, cherishing the softness of new bread between his old teeth. From the wolfish noises by his feet, the boy was tearing into his portion without stopping to breathe.

The kobzar sighed, ripped off another piece of bread, and offered it to his new friend. The piece was snapped up so quickly the kobzar wasn’t sure a dog hadn’t taken it. But the champing noises of little teeth reassured him.

“Say, you’ve got a fine voice,” the kobzar mused. “I bet you’ve got good eyes, too, don’t you?”

The loud chewing stopped, replaced by an uncertain, suspicious silence. 

“Well?” he prompted.

“You can’t have ‘em!” the boy blurted out. 

Ah. 

“And I don’t want them; do I look like an ogre, son? But wouldn’t I be grateful to have a pair of sharp eyes looking out for me?” Inspiration struck: “There’s lots of thieves on these roads, and not everyone’s brave enough to look out for an old man like me.”

There was a very small indrawn breath, so faint that it would never have stirred a hair on the kobzar’s head. But he heard it.

“I’m brave,” the boy whispered, putting his small hand on the kobzar’s. “Like. Um. In the songs. I’m going to be a hero.”

The old man nodded slowly, as though the boy had put before him a whole world of evidence to consider.

“I believe it. What’s your name, son?”

“Jurko.”

“Just ‘Jurko’?”

“B-Bohun.” And nothing more.

The kobzar raised his eyebrows. Now where had a boy without even a father’s name to call his own somehow come by a surname? But God knew it was probably kinder not to ask. Whatever comfort this child had found, claimed, and clung to when he had nothing else of his own was his now by right of suffering. 

“I’m glad to meet you, Jurko Bohun. My name’s Ivan Petrov. I think we’ll be fine friends, won’t we?”

An uncertain silence. The kobzar wasn’t sure what it meant, and the longer he waited the more that silence seemed to gain a defensive hostility: an animal bristling as it confronted something unknown. 

“Hey, but you just call me ‘grandad’ for now, alright?” A performer knew when to change his tune. He pulled out the torban again. “Now, what songs do you know, my lad? I might teach you a few. Maybe even teach you to play, eh?”

A little body threw itself against his side, small arms clinging tight around his neck.

The kobzar had been thinking of a equitable arrangement: the boy’s loyalty bought with food, and the kobzar himself freer in his movements with a pair of trusted eyes to guide him rather than trusting to a changing cast of fellow travellers. He hadn’t really meant to _teach_ more than might be momentarily diverting to a little boy. 

But now this poor, thin child was holding to him, trembling as though the kobzar had offered him a kingdom. 

“Really?” that clear treble asked, breathless in his ear. 

It was hard to be sure, but the kobzar thought he felt something leap from the boy’s body onto his own bare forearm—something intrepid, with many legs. Oh well. He was already breathing through his mouth for the sake of giving the boy some human comfort. The poor lad was all angles under shapeless rags, and he embraced the kobzar as though he didn’t really know how to do so in the first place. 

“Of course I’ll teach you,” the kobzar promised, meaning it this time. 

“Hey, when you’re all grown up and famous, all I ask is you don’t forget me or my brother kobzary, right? One good turn deserves another.”

“I won’t forget. Not ever,” the boy said, solemn as a priest. “I—I swear it on my Cossack honour!” 

The child could only have learned such words from songs. 

_Oh mother, do not weep for me!  
_ _Oh mother, stand proud at your door!_  
_For love of you, I would stay at home,  
_ _Loved I not Cossack honour more!_

The kobzar kissed the boy’s head, blessing him with a heart riven by foolish tenderness. There’s no fool like an old fool, he told himself. He had hardly enough bread to keep himself fed some days. But he was growing old, at an age when other men had grandchildren to sit at their knees. In a few years, what use would Ivan ever have for bread?

“Well, if we’re going to make a Cossack hero of you, you’ll need to learn every song I know, won’t you? So you know how to do the thing properly, eh?”

With Jurko pressed against him, the kobzar could feel the boy’s fervent nod.

“Good boy,” he said, patting the child on the head. The hair under his hand would surely have been silken fine—had it not been matted and filthy. Poor lad. 

Something _certainly_ had just leapt onto him from the boy’s head: the kobzar felt it scuttling amidst the hairs on the back of his hand. A half second later, he felt a nipping bite.

“Hey, now,” he said, putting the boy gently, but firmly, at arm’s length. “I bet you’ve got fast feet, as well as clever eyes and a Cossack’s honour, right? You run and ask the kindest-looking lady you can find who’s got a bath for Ivan the Kobzar and his little guide. You tell them I’ll write a song on the spot for whoever finds enough charity in their house to offer us a bit of hot water for bathing, and more songs besides. You think you can do that?”

“Yes, grandad,” Jurko said.

And without a word more, he flew into the dark spaces beyond the kobzar’s hearing.

That evening, the kobzar slept in honour at a place near the household oven, with Jurko curled at his back like a puppy. When last he’d checked, the boy had wrapped himself _around_ the torban, clinging to it as though the house were a den of thieves.

Well, if anything ever happened to Ivan, he knew his torban would be safe. That was immortality, wasn’t it? A life’s worth of songs would live on in that little burning soul, a strong young heart carrying every verse that the kobzar had taught him.

 _A foolish little heart,_ the kobzar thought, fondly, drawing honourable rags closer around his old bones. _But all singers are fools._

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I lean on a strong background in bullshitting folky-sounding lyrics on the fly, which of course means I thieve and remix without shame.  
> For the first song, I lifted one verse from [a legit 16th century Cossack marching song. Inspiration came more obliquely from ](http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/livesay/ukraina/ukraina.html#17)[“The Hern”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKMt3Z_Q_C0) by John Fleagle (which is itself “The Corpus Christi Carol” (1504) set to a Breton tune) and good ol’ Taras Shevchenko’s “The Mighty Dnieper Roars”.  
> The last song owes its core to Richard Lovelace’s poem, [“To Lucasta, Going to the Warres”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Lucasta,_Going_to_the_Warres) (1649), which is actually a depressing goddam Jan mood of a poem now that I think about it. Additional theft from the sea shanty ["Mollymauk"/"Mollymawk"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AhVTOGHh54).


End file.
